Friday, December 24, 2010

But, hey, it isn't a humiliating climbdown - they made $25m over what they paid, and are able to push out a press release with a bit of dignity:

"Harmonix has and will continue to create terrific video games, but for us, it is about focus. The console games business requires an expertise and scale that we don't have," chief executive Philippe Dauman said.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

SoundExchange - roughly comparable to our broken-but-keen PRS - has just published its figures for 2009. Yes, despite burning through nearly $17million dollars worth of musicians' and writers' money on administration, it's taken until now to get the figures out.

MusicAlly has the details:

. They reveal incoming royalties of $204.2 million for the year (up 20% on 2008), outgoing distributions to artists and copyright holders of $155.5 million (up 55%), and operating costs of $16.7 million.

You'll have spotted a gap between what came in, and what went out. It turns out there's gallons of dollars slushing about in SoundExchange's coffers:

The key figure being the $111 million of ‘unpayable funds’

A distribution agency that can't find homes for a tenth of a billion bucks sounds like an organisation that isn't spending its seventeen million admin cream-off very effectively from where I'm sitting.

SoundExchange says it paid out $38.3 million of the $111 million in Q1-Q3 2010.

It's unclear if that $38.3m is included in the "outgoing distributions" - assuming it is, that makes the gap between what's come in and what has gone out in 2009 something around $70m.

The music industry likes to shout about filesharers "stealing" from artists. A collection agency which takes in millions of dollars to distribute to people, then admits it doesn't actually know who that money should be going to might be committing no crime, but seems to be in something of a murky grey area.

Ah, what could be better than Gordon nodding his way through some Bono justification?

Gordon has copied a piece Bono has written somewhere or other - he doesn't credit it, which is funny, what with Rupert Murdoch getting so cross when people "steal" News International "content" and pass it off as their own - and applauds quietly the Vox's bravery:

BONO understands why some folk "projectile vomit" when he preaches about humanitarian issues.

The U2 rocker - who's become as famous for his campaigning as he has for his music - admits he can sometimes be a "pain in the a***".

In a brutal scrutiny of his character, the One star also reveals he infuriates himself at times.

Oh, but surely you're being too hard on yourself, Mr. Bono? Cannot you find it in your heart to exonerate yourself? It is Christmas, after all.

"All I can say is that you can become traumatised as well as inspired by the lives you meet along the dirt road of extreme poverty.

"Sometimes I forget that I'm an artist - but I shouldn't, because that's what I am, a working pop artist in a big F-Off rock band."

That's alright then. So long as you never forget that you're an artist.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Gordon has handed the obviously staged kiss "caught" by photographers to Richard White to "report" on:

The show winner, 27, chatted intimately with ex-S Club Junior Stacey McClean hours after single When We Collide hit the top spot.

Matt - often told by show judges "You made that song your own" - kept smoothing
Stacey's hair as they spoke at London's May Fair Hotel.

This, of course, is a genuine thing that really happened, and not an attempt by his managers to try and shift the impression that Cardle is about as thrilling as a cold cup of coffee in a queue at St Pancras.

Although the thought that anyone would recognise Stacey McClean without someone handing out copies of her CV to the paparazzi does seem a little unlikely.

A few years back, there was a brief vogue for chunky little plastic boxes which, when you hit a button, would play a song. I've got vague memories of them being offered in McDonalds; certainly, they were considered to be kiddies' toys.

The Playbutton is a digital music album in the form of a badge, providing album artwork that you can wear. Pin it to your lapel, plug in a pair of headphones and you can walk down the street displaying your musical taste as you listen.

Now, you could say that's perhaps a bit of a curious idea as a gimmick; knock a few of these out as part of a marketing campaign and it'd be a bit of a laugh, right?

The truth, though, is that they're thinking of it as an actual format. To sit alongside CDs:

"It's a small object, perfect and immediate, that you can hold in your hand," says Nick Dangerfield, founder of the New York-based Playbutton company.

Mr Dangerfield says he came up with the format in response to a widespread feeling that people were "tired with CDs", but finding digital music downloads "not entirely satisfying".

"I thought about giving a new use to digital files by putting them in a dedicated player. It's an iconic form that gives you the chance to show your affiliation," he says.

People aren't "tired of CDs", though, are they? They're buying downloads because they're more convenient. You don't see people in HMV... well, you don't see people in HMV at all, but if you did, they're not saying "I'd really buy a record, but these circles of plastic are so derivative. If only there was some ugly badge thing I could buy instead."

Seriously, the idea that it's somehow going to be attractive to buy music in a format where the music can't be transferred to another player, which can only play the ten tracks over and over again and - oh yes - you can't shuffle the order of the tunes:

Mr Dangerfield thinks the sequencing of an album is about "surrendering control to the artist" and that something important is lost when we have the power to rearrange its track listing.

Yes. The power to not have to listen to rubbishy filler that has been dolloped on the record in order to stretch an ep-worth of idea into a lp-worth of a sale.

So, this latter day eight track should at least have the benefit of being cheap, right?

Mr Dangerfield thinks the ideal price would be $15 (£10) if bands sold them at their gigs, but the price could be up to double that, "depending on the type of release and sales channel".

"It's up to the artist to decide how much they want to charge," he says.

"If you say to people, 'It's an MP3 player and it's $25,' they say it's cheap," he says. "But if you say, 'It's an MP3 player and it's already got a good record inside,' they think it's expensive."

To be honest, I don't believe that anyone would say "$25 for a 256mb mp3 player? That sounds like a bargain", and it's not much of an advert for your product to say that as soon as anyone puts music on the thing, its perceived value drops like a stone.

Yeah, she's good. We've got two signed albums at home. And yes, it's a really, really good song. Universal's really pushing her to be really big. To be this big global artist. Will she meet their expectations? No.

That's quite amusing. Let's just hope they don't go and say or do something so irritating it sets my teeth grinding again...

John and Edward Grimes (Jedward) star in Nintendo's new TV ad campaign and are ambassadors for Dragon Quest IX on the Nintendo DS.

It's MICHAEL JACKSON's biggest-selling album in terms of opening week sales in the UK since Dangerous in 1991.

Yes, but that's only because it's Christmas week and people are buying gifts - and because everything since Dangerous was either a repackaging or stillborn. There are going to be so many people opening packages on the 25th saying "oh... thanks, Gran... you remembered I loved Michael Jackson" and swallowing back the words "when I was six years old."

For a rotten album, it's an alright sale, but proves once again that by the time he died, his place in the entertainment industry was closer to Ripley's Believe It Or Not rather than Presley.

The article is a bit strange, too, as - despite being published "today" - it's speculating that Matt Cardle might be Christmas Number One. Despite, erm, the Christmas Number One having been announced last night.

It looks like it's only going to be available as part of a bundle with unlimited voice, text and data, which might help with apparent take-up figures, as on its own it's not much of a service: DRM-wrapped music files that you can apparently only store on your phone. So unlimited by number, but severely limited as to how you can use them.

Noel Gallagher, of Chalfont St Giles, applied for planning permission to build a gazebo of some sort.

Warners got angry that having music paid for by advertising didn't treat the "artists" with "respect". Not like churning out best ofs and dumping acts who don't recoup does. Talking of respect, EMI's Guy Hands doesn't honor his mother and father with visits, as that might affect his tax status. Legally, he's a tax avoider. And if you can't remember the difference, tax dodgers don't pay their tax illegally, tax avoiders just don't pay tax unethically.

Paramore have lost forty per cent of their workforce, in the sort of downsizing which makes Eric Pickles reach for the lotion bottle and his special sock.

The brothers Josh and Zac Farro have quit, although somewhat confusingly they appear to have "put in a request to leave" two months ago. So they must have been working out their notice, then, like they were on an insurance call centre team.

That the band is confident of continuing without a drummer might give the impression that it's almost like the music bit of Paramore doesn't have a great deal to do with the front end.

"Its official! I need to move. I need to sweat. I need to make new music! Music I can dance to."

The thought of Madonna having her typing minion fire up Facebook to announce that she's preparing to gush sweat from whatever pores have survived the flesh cauterizing processes she's been through fair puts me off my cheesecake.

Perhaps she's obliged to issue a warning, as it also functions as a statement of intent to start eating the monkey glands of younger, more interesting artists:

"I'm on the lookout for the maddest, sickest, most bad ass people to collaborate with. I'm just saying"

Did you catch that at the end? That's what young people say when they're "chatting" on their "text phones" or "Twitting" through their "Faceybooks".

Madonna's search for the sickest people to collaborate with has been successful; she's spending Sunday at the Royal Leamington Spa General on the acute ward. Miss Ivy Doodleson, 86, tells reporters "we're just going to jam and see what comes out of it, although the gentleman who had a jews' harp didn't make it through the night, I'm afraid."

Jonathan Ross said he'd leave the BBC, which worried Gennaro Castaldo more than it probably should. ITV came up with Pop Star To Opera Star, taking people who sing for a living and putting them in a crazy position where they had to sing for a living.